You may ask, "Dr. T, raw food provides a wealth of enzymes, nutrients, and fiber, why do you insist against a raw food diet?" You are correct about the abundance of enzymes, nutrients, and fiber eating raw foods provide in maintaining, building and even rebuilding a healthy body. However, a raw food diet insists on eating ONLY raw foods. It is not all bad.
What is good about The Raw Foods Diet:
• Fresh, nutrient-dense foods like vegetables and sprouted nuts/seeds make up the diet
•Grains on this diet are sprouted which reduce anti-nutrients and increases nutritional value
•Focus is on seasonal ingredients
•There are no refined sugar or carbs
• It offers creative techniques and recipes to help you eat more fresh foods
Why we do not recommend this diet:
The diet was at best only experimental just starting in the 1800s when Swiss-born Maximilian Oskar Bircher-Benner found that eating an apple cured an ailment he was experiencing, hence the saying "eat an apple a day keeps the doctor away."
Since then the diet has gone in many directions and without consideration for what a human body needs to fully function. All cultures included raw protein, whether that was raw dairy, beef carpaccio, sushi, raw oysters, raw eggs, etc. Nowadays people think it just means raw and vegetarian, which is not correct.
So here are the actual problems with the Raw Food Diet:
•TOO MUCH FRUIT—which means you get too much fructose and sugar in your diet
•Likely very high carb—this will disrupt insulin, hormonal balance, and stop or slow weight-loss
•Too much raw food is hard to digest—too much fiber from raw food can do a number on your digestion leading to weak digestive function
•Having too many nuts introduce inflammatory omegas 6 fats which can upset the entire body
•Deficiency in complete proteins, B12, or zinc—of course eating raw meat will fix that
•Deficiency in these essential nutrients- again resolved with raw meat
•Too much work/unsustainable long-term
The Raw Food Diet requires a lot of effort and unless you are a Chef specifically trained with special equipment just for this diet it is highly impractical for most people.
Bottom line: I could see this working as a cleanse-type diet for a few days, but that is it…and there are better cleanses to choose from.
Long-term it is not nutritionally or practically sustainable.
